


A Little Help From Her Friends

by Rainey657



Category: Lucifer TV
Genre: F/M, Religious Fanaticism, graphic physical violence to main character, possible violence trigger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:17:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15518772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainey657/pseuds/Rainey657
Summary: Story begins somewhere around the middle of Season Three. Lieutenant Marcus Pierce is still a jerk, but not Cain and not physically attracted to Detective Chloe Decker. Mazikeen and Chloe are still roommates. Charlotte Richards is alive and healthy. Chloe is still in denial about who Lucifer really is.





	A Little Help From Her Friends

We have been told that before the beginning of time the brightest light in the morning sky rebelled, defying the Father who had imposed an Order of His own devising on the heavens. In His rage, the Father rebuked His beloved son, Samael, and banished him to the furthest reaches of existence. In a language that can never be spoken by mortal tongues, He cursed His son and tore the sacred name from His heart, saying “Thou art My bringer of light, the finest of all My creations, and thou seekest to defy Me and call it _**love?**_ ”

But there is far more to the story.

*******************

 

It had been what Dan called “a real shit-pile” of a day. Trixie had demanded (not asked, demanded) to wear one of Maze's tops and a pair of last year's leather leggings (too small then and circulation-stoppers now) to school, and their roommate wasn't present to squash the wardrobe malfunction. When Chloe tried, Trixie sulked and pouted, insisting that Maze though it looked fine. Then, in spite of the 50 degree weather, her darling daughter ran from the car when Chloe pulled up to the school, leaving her warm coat behind in the back seat.  
Fine, let her shiver.  
Which backfired when the school secretary called and informed “Miss Espinosa's mother”, in a voice as chilly as the ambient air temperature, that Trixie was forced to wear a jacket “much too small for her” which had been pulled out of the lost-and-found bin in the front office. Did “mother” not understand that children's health depended on appropriate attire for prevailing weather?  
Chloe gritted her teeth and promised to return the jacket, cleaned, by the end of the week. Halfway through a detailed homicide report, carefully composed on her new department-issued laptop (and whose idea was it to buy PCs instead of Macs?), the station's power shut down unexpectedly. Of course, she hadn't hit command-save in the past hour and lost the entire first draft.  
Then Ella bumped her elbow, causing the detective to upend a cup of hot latte on her desk and new jeans (white, $99 on sale at TJ Maxx). The little lab tech refused to accept any reassurances that of course it was understood to be an accident and persisted in trying to wipe up the mess, which resulted in paperwork decorated with inky smears and formerly pristine white jeans with an unfortunately-placed coffee-colored stain.  
Could the damned day get any worse? Hell, yes, it could!  
She was pulling on her coat and heading out the door for the delightful evening battle with freeway traffic when the lieutenant called her into his office. “Close the door, Decker. We need to talk.”  
Door closed, Chloe remained standing, in the hope that whatever the lieutenant wanted he'd keep it brief.  
“Sit down and look at this.” He handed her an official-looking correspondence bearing the elaborate letterhead of one of Los Angeles' top law firms.  
Plowing through the legalese, her stomach dropped.  
“You should have known something like this was coming,” Pierce growled.  
Oh, fuck. She really should have known. But why hadn't someone in legal spoken up earlier? “Sir, we assumed the department's attorneys had gone over this earlier. I don't see how anyone can suspect Lucifer of...”  
“DAMMIT, DECKER!!” Pierce slammed his fist on the desk. “This leaves my ass hanging in the wind! I allowed him to hang around because you two have the best closure rate in the department. You know what 'assume' means?”  
Before she could respond, the lieutenant hissed: “Letting Morningstar tag along on investigations makes an ASS out of you and ME! He's not a cop. He doesn't belong anywhere near your suspects. Now, this..”. he waved the legal papers... “dickwad's attorneys have gotten his confession thrown out, there's a lawsuit pending against homicide and I'm expecting a line of ambulance-chasers a mile long outside my goddamned door tomorrow, wanting their clients exonerated because some nightclub owner conned them into confessing guilt!”  
“Sir, we ran this by legal...”  
“Oh, did you? Or did the lieutenant I replaced say she'd run it by legal? Legal says they've never heard of the guy and wouldn't approve of his bullshit in a New York minute! You're a professional – do you really think having a civilian questioning suspects is going to hold up in court?”  
“Sir, I was right beside him the entire time...”  
“And that's your problem, Decker. And mine. I like this job; I don't want to have to look for another one because I let some loose canon hang out with one of my detectives WHILE SHE WAS ON THE JOB!!”  
Pierce turned an alarming shade of red, seemed to realize he was shouting, and took a deep breath. “Get rid of him. Morningstar is persona non grata at this station from now on. I'll throw his ass out myself if I have to. Thanks to the two of you... Decker, are you fucking him? No, don't answer that. Do NOT answer that! I don't give a damn if you are. He's out. Get rid of him however you have to, but if I see him here again I'll put you on suspension and you'll be working traffic in Downey.  
“Now go home, and tomorrow you're going to do your job the way legal wants you to.” Chloe froze. Pierce looked up. “Go home, Decker. I don't want to look at you.”

****************

She made it to her car without crying. She'd never been yelled at by her boss, even when Palmetto Street broke loose. Nobody had ever yelled at her like that! It wasn't right! She and Lucifer had worked together for years; they had the best clearance record in the department, the other detectives were beginning to accept her, and it almost seemed like she was finally doing some good in the world. The two of them had just assumed (that word again) their original lieutenant had approved Lucifer acting as civilian consultant, and if Olivia had slept with him, well, she hadn't. She thought it had all been finalized at the trial of her father's killer, when Charlotte Richards put Lucifer on the stand and then her. Yeah, the killer was found innocent, but everyone seemed to accept and even admire her working relationship with Lucifer Morningstar.  
Oh god. Lucifer. What was she going to say? Convincing him to do or not do something was a crapshoot; Lucifer did as he damn well pleased, and somehow convinced people what he wanted was what they wanted, too. But this, this was an absolute. He couldn't be at the station, couldn't accompany her on investigations, couldn't even talk to her while she was working.  
Okay, they had screwed up; forget their good results. Maybe... Charlotte? He had some kind of murky history with Charlotte; perhaps as an attorney she could help convince him to... what? Keep his head down? Lucifer? Well, could Charlotte talk to legal, attorney to attorney? Not likely. But maybe she could explain to Lucifer why staying away from the station would be better for Chloe's career, at least for the foreseeable future. She dialed Charlotte's cell.  
Twenty minutes later, it was apparent that the shitty day wasn't yet over. Charlotte was still at work, spoke to her supervisor, and came back on the phone with a chastened tone Chloe hadn't heard from her before. “Ohhhh, dear. I'm afraid he's really on their shit-list. So are you, by the way. Didn't you ever stop to think that allowing a civilian...?”  
“Charlotte! He used that mojo thing he does on one of your clients and got a confession – why didn't you say something then?”  
“He did? Really? When? Because it's obviously a violation of my client's civil rights!”  
Chloe shook the phone viciously, imagining it was Charlotte Richards' head. “Yes, he did, and you didn't say one damn thing at the time! Just... look, forget about that. What can I say to him to get him to accept the situation?”  
Charlotte continued being less than helpful. “How should I know? He's your friend. Tell him to stay away. Maybe if you stop sleeping with him...”  
“I am NOT SLEEPING WITH...”  
“No, of course you're not. Nobody thinks that, dear.”  
Chloe made what Trixie called her wolverine snarl and g e n t l y disconnected Charlotte Richards. Her insurance didn't cover trashed cell phones, and she'd just replaced the battery in this one – two days before the discount went into effect, goddamnit. Yet another bitchslap by fate. Lux was nearby; deal with the biggest problem first, and try to ignore that the 'biggest problem' was far more appealing than it… than he had a right to be. Her partner. Her Lucifer. The man who made her a better cop and a better person. And the man who could cost her her job. They weren't sleeping together; it wasn't like she was breaking up with him...

********************

“Detective? Are you breaking up with me?”  
How could she hear every word he whispered over Happy Hour chaos? Why couldn't he understand that she wasn't ending a romantic relationship, just a working connection?  
“This is not my idea, Lucifer. We're about to get an important case thrown out because I let you interrogate a suspect. You're not a detective; you don't work for us and you aren't on the payroll. Legal is throwing a fit. My job is on the line. Marcus is really pissed...”  
“Marcus. I knew that human anus was behind this. What does he need to consider the subject clo...”  
“GodDAMMIT, Lucifer!! This is not about Marcus Pierce! It's about the legal ramifications of a civilian questioning a suspect! It's about the lawyers! Will you please listen to me? I'll lose my job if you keep coming around!”  
“Your job.” Lux' overhead lights reflected off his eyes, and for just a second they seemed to be swimming with... no, Lucifer never cried. Certainly not over her, and not over what was nothing more to him than a hobby. She was just an 'interest'; she'd accepted that when he came back from Vegas with a new wife and yet another story about his insane family. And speaking of family...  
“Yes. My job, Lucifer. It's important to me. I don't own a nightclub; I can't afford to live in this city and take care of Trixie without working. And I won't be working if all the cases we... I investigated are thrown out on a technicality. I talked with Charlotte, she talked with legal, and I'm in big trouble for letting you help.  
“You aren't a cop, Lucifer. You shouldn't have been anywhere near me when I was on the job. I'm in real trouble, here. You want to help? Stay away from me. Please! Maybe not forever, but for now.”  
His face. Oh lord, she'd see that until her dying day. His lips parted slightly, his features sagged and for a second he seemed much older than any human could possibly be. He looked like... do people look like this when they hear their death sentence? But, no, no... in less than a heartbeat he was back to being Smartass Lucifer, eyebrow raised and smirk in place, one hand casually waving an easy goodbye.  
“Fine, detective. The last thing I want to do is disrupt your life. Your happiness and that of your Spawn are more important to me than a casual interest in bringing punishment to evildoers. Do let me know when everything is once again copacetic at your place of work.  
“Meanwhile, as you reminded me, I have a club to run.”  
She bit down hard to keep her lip from trembling. When did he turn and walk away, signaling for a drink and motioning the bartender to turn up the music? Why was she just standing here?  
Detective Chloe Decker headed for the stairs, wobbling slightly in her boots and narrowly missing colliding with a young woman in jeans and motorcycle jacket headed for the bar. Her police training registered straight brown hair in a bowl cut and huge glasses perched on a snub nose. The lights must have been set on 'rotate' because it seemed as if she glowed slightly, but the detective was in no way interested in anything but going home.  
Home. Where she and Trixie (and Maze, if she'd returned, and oh please she was back) could snuggle under blankets and watch funny movies. Where she could sob into Kleenex and drink until she couldn't stand up, where Linda could share the couch while lending a warm shoulder and Ella could hug them all close as one heartbroken detective cried her eyes out for the best partner she'd ever had, the man she was afraid she'd just torn apart, along with herself.

 

*************************

The woman in the ballistic nylon jacket fished a cherry out of her drink and picked her teeth with the plastic sword as Lux's early evening drinkers wandered past. “Nice one, bro. Handled that like a champ.”  
Lucifer stared at the table. “Shut up, Az.”  
“Or what? You screwed the pooch, dude; instead of helping her make it better you're gonna let her twist in the wind? Abandon her to the mercies of lawyers and Marcus Pierce?”  
Lucifer snarled, and anyone human would have been cowering in terror. But his little sister was no more human than the Lord of Hell and unimpressed by his rage. “She told me to stay away from her! She chose her 'job' over me!!”  
Azrael, also known as “Rae-Rae” and “The Peach”, smiled sweetly. “What did you expect her to do? Did you not make it clear that you found other women more enticing? You paraded a string of lovelies past your detective and thought... what, exactly? That she'd recognize your sterling qualities as a lover? That she'd be delighted to fall into the sack with you and not expect fidelity in return? That she'd give up her life's work for you, while you gave nothing back?”  
The Angel of Death swung both feet up on the table and leaned back in her chair at an angle few humans could manage without crashing to the floor. “All that time in Hell, dealing with the worst of the worst, and you never bothered to learn what women want.  
“You, Lucifer, are a moron. Luckily for you, I'm here to help.”  
Her brother sulked. “Don't need your help.”  
“What? Did I hear you say you don't need my help? Okay. I'll finish this drink and I'm gone. You've done so nicely up to now, I'd hate to interfere.”  
Lucifer coughed and rubbed his face. “How's Father?”  
“Who the fuck knows? Haven't heard from him in aeons. I think he's moved on.”  
“But Uriel said...”  
“'Uriel said',” she sneered, mimicking her older brother's precise British diction. “Uriel was an asshole. He came down here with a half-baked notion to take out everyone he though Father had a beef with. Uriel was going to win Father's approval or die trying.  
“And by the way, where the fuck's my knife?”  
“Father didn't tell him to...?”  
“Nope.” She popped the 'p' like a wad of well-chewed gum. “Far as I know, Father hasn't told any of us much of anything since Yesh got nailed to a tree. I think that was the last straw, so to speak. His pets turning on each other was more than he could take, or... I dunno, maybe he just got bored with it all.  
“Luce, things have changed in the Silver City since you and Mom were thrown out. I don't suppose Mena told you much?”  
“Amenadiel is God's Warrior.” Lucifer's voice dripped sarcasm.  
“Always was a little too fond of his title; I think he was the last one Father actually communicated with.” Azrael nodded. “Blind as a rock to what was going on. Father's lost interest in all of us, human and angel. You could probably get back in, if you wanted.”  
Lucifer looked pensive. “Do I want to?”  
“Nope. What you want is Chloe Decker.”  
Whispered. “She doesn't want me.”  
Azrael shook her head at her brother's cluelessness. “What your lady wants is to make things right. To restore balance in the world. That doesn't always go well with playing by the rules, as the two of you are finding out. But, Lucifer, you're playing at their table now. You play by their rules or cash out.  
“You wanted to come to Earth; well, here it is. This is how it works with humans.”  
“But... why?”  
Oh, Luce. “Because. Just... because.”  
“But... how can I be around Chloe if I can't partner with her?”  
Ah. Now, we're getting down to it. “Have you taken her flying?”  
He looked down, looked at me, and I knew what he'd done. Or hadn't done, as it were. “Ah, for fuck's sake!! You haven't shown her, have you? What, she thinks you're a nutjob? A human who is fixated on his religious-loony father? Does she think you're fantasizing about being an angel?”  
“Actually, I've been scrupulously honest with her.”  
“Lucifer, have you shown her you're the Devil?”  
He started to nod, then froze and shook his head. “I tried to show her my devil-face, but now it's gone. I cut my wings off when I first got here, but held onto the face. I thought Amenadiel took it, but...”  
This was worse that I'd thought. “Oh, Dad! What else have you got to show her?”  
“Wings.”  
“Thought you cut 'em off.”  
“I did. They came back.”  
“Lucifer, you're my brother, I've known you for eternity, and even I don't believe this shit! What were you thinking? You want Chloe to put her job and home and maybe the custody of her kid on the line for something that sounds like bullshit? Like you've done too many drugs?”  
“I have NOT done too many drugs! Drugs don't affect me that way!”  
Azrael, the Angel of Death and younger sister to Lucifer Morningstar, let him blather on, shaking her head.  
Honestly, she thought to herself, this dude is clueless!

*******************

 

After collapsing on her couch and sobbing until she was ready to throw up, Chloe decided to dump her problems in someone else's lap for a change. She thought writing to an online advice columnist might help, and gave it try.  
Dear Aunt Blabby (her letter said):  
My best friend and partner seriously believes he's a mythological being with magical abilities. I've seen him doing things I can't explain, but he can't possibly be what he tells everyone he is. He's rich and handsome and has lots of girlfriends, so he must be doing something right, right?  
The problem is that he talked my former supervisor into allowing him to work with me. I'm a professional who works with traumatized people in a crisis setting, somewhat like (but not) an emergency room doctor. He's been a real help in bringing many crisis situations to an end and saving lives, but there may be severe legal problems with him being at my job.  
I worked hard to get where I am, and don't want to put my job at risk. My new supervisor is angry that someone with no experience or education in doing what I do has been allowed to work with me and has demanded I tell my partner not to come to my job any longer.  
My partner is angry with me for not insisting that we be allowed to work together, and he won't talk to me. This hurts! What should I do?  
Signed: Gullible

Within 30 minutes, she had her response.

Dear Gullible:  
Oh, honey! Your partner/friend sounds like a “gamer” – and you are the one being gamed. People work hard to build professional credentials, as you've discovered, and for him to insist his fantasies are a substitute for training and experience is foolish beyond belief. For you to accept them as a justifiable reason for allowing him into crisis situations where lives are at risk is criminally stupid!  
I dream of being a brain surgeon or a fighter pilot, but I would never expect someone to let me into an operating room or cockpit without providing either credentials or proof of my “magical abilities”.  
Tell him to whip out his bona fides or sprout wings and fly. If he can't do either one, tell him to fly out of your life. Ain't nobody got time for this!  
Yours, Aunt Blabby  
   
Well, that didn't help matters. If she told Lucifer to whip out his bona fides, she was pretty sure what she'd see, and it wouldn't involve anything the legal department would accept.  
Time to call a meeting of the Tribe.  
Three hours later, Ella sat perched on the back of the couch, chin in one hand and drink in the other, trying to hit the television with spitwads launched out a plastic straw. Maze was in the back yard, throwing knives at her stuffed target... a dummy with a picture of Donald Trump's face pinned to the head. She was on her fourth print-out of the evening and showing no signs of slowing down. Linda was mixing a third pitcher of strawberry Margueritas in the kitchen sink, moving with the elaborate caution of someone who had over-imbibed and was trying desperately to remain vertical. Chloe was sitting on the floor with a blanket over her head. Her tribeys had gotten tired of seeing her fight back tears and insisted she hide under the official “tribal burka” and “get 'em all out, girlfriend!” before surfacing for another drink.  
“Uh neemf a glusssuhwttatrr,” came from under the blanket. Ella leaned down and lifted a corner.  
“Whatcha need? Done crying?”  
“Water,” came the answer. “And gimme a Kleenex.”  
Water was provided, Kleenex handed over, and the blanket dropped. “I give her another 15 minutes,” the little lab tech called to Linda.  
“You're doing good!” came her encouraging yell.  
“He's a jerk!” Maze chimed in from the back yard, and one of her knives thudded into the dummy's torso with a meaty thwack!  
Linda shuddered. “I say give him two days and he'll be calling you. Lucifer doesn't hear the word 'no' very often and doesn't cope well with it.”  
“I tell him 'no' all the damn time!” Chloe shouted back. “Wait, that doesn't sound right...”  
Ella giggled, burst into inebriated hilarity, and fell forward onto the cushions. “She tells him 'no' but his dick says 'yes, yes, yes!'”  
“Ella!!” Linda scolded, then broke down laughing at the mental picture the words painted.  
“Thanks, guys,” came from under the blanket. “You're being a real help, here.”  
THWWAACCKKK!!! came from the back yard.  
Chloe flipped the blanket off her head. “Dammit, Maze, did you put a knife through the storage shed again?”  
The evening went downhill from there.

***********************

Terra Haute, Indiana… Topeka, Kansas… Fort Worth, Texas… Portland, Maine… Buffalo, New York… Richland, Virginia… Los Angeles... Pocatello, Idaho... Jacksonville, Florida… New York City… Indio, California… In one city after another, hospitals were seeing an influx of comatose patients who appeared to be sleeping normally but could not be awakened. Their blood chemistry may or may not have indicated recent use of controlled substances and/or alcohol, but nothing explained their inability to regain consciousness. Then one facility ran a sleeper through an MRI, and the resulting brain scan shocked the nation into wakefulness.  
Something was going on in these people’s brains, something inexplicable.  
The human brain behaves in generally predictable patterns, but brain waves found in the sleepers’ minds were like nothing ever seen before. Electrical charges flowing between neurons follow very specific rules of behavior; these electrical impulses were “all over the place,” according to one lab technician who spoke to reporters. Sleeping patients were wheeled into the nearest MRI facilities and each scan showed unexpected results: Something was going on in their heads. What it was remained a mystery.  
Then they began waking. At least, some of them did. Those who regained consciousness were surprisingly reluctant to talk about what had become know as their “dreams”, except to insist they had no idea what they’d taken or where it came from. Threats from law enforcement had no effect except to attract a battalion of attorneys willing to defend the dreamers’ right to avoid self incrimination. Eventually, supposed tablets of the unknown substance were discovered, confiscated and tested, but proved to be composed of cornstarch, chalk and various inert products easily found by sweeping any kitchen floor.  
But, for the reawakened, things had changed. Friends and relatives began reporting that many of those who had once been everything from the life of the party to hardcore troublemakers were now different in some indefinable way.  
“Tawnisha, she like a good time, ya know?” one friend told a reporter. “Now, that girl ain’t no fun no more. She be different; she drawin’ pictures alla time. Don’t return our calls, neither, like she too good for us.”  
Tawnisha wasn’t the only one. Frat bros with shining reputations as power drinkers and party animals dropped out of their brotherhoods and changed their majors. Good ol’ boys whose motto had been “Hold muh beer and watch this, you sumbitch!” sobered up and began staying home, occasionally to the dismay of families that had been managing nicely in their absence. Dreamers who had been the bad examples of their communities appeared to quiet their formerly festive lifestyles and slip quietly into obscurity.  
The reverse was also true. Upon awakening, former introverts sought out the limelight, while quiet churchmice became roaring lions. It was virtually impossible to know what was going on in dreamers' minds, but all familiar with the situation agreed that Something Had Happened.  
Those who did not awaken but were fortunate enough to receive medical attention survived on intravenous hydration and tube feeding while their brains burned merrily along. Those who weren’t discovered in time were eventually located by the stench of their rotting bodies; the human form is not designed to survive more than a few days without water.  
There were, of course, success stories… some odder than others, some qualifying as “miracles”. One such “miracle” was a middle-aged man who had spent years in a wheelchair after sustaining a broken back and severe burns when his HumVee hit an IED during the first Gulf War. Sarge had faithfully followed the VA’s physical rehab routine until his wife died of uterine cancer and his physician was forced to take the old warhorse off the opioids that had allowed him to survive unending chronic pain from his injuries. Whether the drug now called “Dreamerz” was in his most recent purchase of illegal narcotics or came from another source entirely was never determined, and Sarge had no interest in clarifying the issue.  
Upon regaining consciousness, he bought a second-hand computer and began writing a book, something no one had expected of the 10th grade dropout. Rather than allowing anyone to read the original draft, Sarge packaged it up and shipped it off to a major New York publisher. His friends smiled and congratulated him on the effort, sure that he’d be rewarded with ringing silence.  
Two weeks later, Sarge received a certified letter with a check for $350,000 to ensure publishing rights. His friends refused to believe it until the book shot onto the New York Times’ Top 10 list, where it remained for months. At that point, the novice author began turning down all speaking engagements and publicity tours, preferring to remain alone in the apartment he’d shared with his deceased wife.  
Those who knew him swore the writing sounded nothing like Sarge, and speculated that he might have somehow pilfered the ideas and themes from an unknown source. They were unaware that behind drawn blinds and a silenced phone he was working on a follow-up manuscript.  
Sarge’s wasn’t the only unique response to the unknown substance. A young woman in Chicago had developed an unfortunate attraction to the smell of airplane glue beginning back in the eighth grade. By the time she turned 18, her brain had been thoroughly fried and she had to be gently discouraged from wandering into rush hour traffic and taking a wintry swim in Lake Michigan. Somewhere, somehow, she acquired Dreamz and descended into the coma that accompanied it.  
But upon waking, the woman’s glue-destroyed synapses appeared to have been restored. Her intelligence tested at 126, she enrolled in a local college and when last contacted by the media was majoring in theology.  
Wonder of wonders. Miracle of miracles.

*******************

Pacing seemed the only answer. 50 steps down the hall, turn at the entrance to Head Trauma, 95 steps to the elevator, turn and repeat. For variety, detour past the nurses’ station and give those angels of mercy (who deserved that appellation, as his relatives surely did not) a small wave, through the lobby and across to the waiting room with its glassed-in garden observatory. Pause. Stare at the skyline. Imagine finding the creature who had dosed his detective. Imagine throwing him off a roof, perhaps catching him just before impact and then doing it again. And again.  
Turn. Pace. And back.  
When not walking perimeter, he sat by her bed, talking softly about nothing, wondering if his words penetrated the world that had become her mind. What world was it? It seemed that everyone’s differed. It even had a name, now. It was said that Dreamz offered lifetimes, adventures, death, glory, horrors and transcendent miracles. Was she even human in there?  
How would a police detective with a fixed, rational view of reality survive whatever strange life awaited each person who consumed the drug?  
Lucifer laughed, but no one mistook the ugly bitterness in that sound for mirth. Dreamz was stranger than any narcotic ever seen. Those who awoke said little about their experiences, but those who knew them said they had changed in inexplicable ways.  
Every hour nurses took her vital signs, tested eye reflex, light sensitivity, pinprick on fingertip. Every hour: No change.  
She lay so still. He turned her carefully, to prevent bed sores. She never moved on her own. None of the dreamers did. No sound, no twitch, no involuntary spasm. Heartbeat steady. Blood pressure steady.  
Yet MRI scans reported that her brain was on fire, producing levels of activity in unusual patterns never before recorded. The primary identifier of a Dreamz coma.  
He wondered, briefly, how it had been done. Had someone slipped a tab into her glass? Who dared that at the Devil’s nightclub? But she knew to watch her drink. In her food? There was no way to know, and no way to find out unless... no, until she woke up. She would wake up. He was sure of it.  
She had to wake up.  
Had to!  
   
Lucifer Morningstar had read Sarge’s book and felt it a bit derivative yet... interesting. Still, it told him nothing about what he could expect when the Detective opened her eyes. And she would. She would. The question was, would she still want him?  
He had also read everything he could find about the after-effects and how dreamers changed once they regained consciousness. Some became more than they had been. Others developed new and esoteric interests that took them far from their established social circles. Still others abandoned friends and family in their pursuit of… what? No one knew. They never seemed willing or able to say what they were looking for.  
Out of sheer desperation, he explored the idea that his ‘mojo’ might work on an awakened dreamer; would “What do you most desire?” give him a better idea of what Chloe might desire?  
Only one way to find out.

 

“What do you most desire?”  
The former sleeper stared at the Devil, her eyes flat and devoid of emotion. It hadn't been simple to find an awakened dreamer willing to let him attempt to learn what went on in a mind that had been unreachable by the best science had to offer. He took a deep breath and tried again.  
“Tell me, what do you most desire?”  
She blinked. “Why?”  
Lucifer Morningstar was taken aback. Only one person had ever been able to resist him, and she was lying in a hospital bed miles away. “Wha...? 'Why?'?”  
Now, the woman focused on her interrogator and blinked. “Yes, why? Why would you be concerned about what I desire? Do you believe you can help me achieve it?”  
Well, that was an unexpected response. “I... may, possibly. I can facilitate numerous desires.”  
Again, that stare. Lucifer was nonplussed. In a voice enhanced by celestial amplification, undetectable to recording equipment but guaranteed to reverberate through every cell of the human body, the Devil threw everything he had at the woman: “Tell me what you desire most!”  
Not a blink. Not a flinch.  
“Again... why?”  
“BECAUSE THE WOMAN I LOVE IS SLEEPING AND I CAN'T WAKE HER UP!!”  
From the corner of one eye he saw Daniel Espinosa jump and Dr. Linda Martin move to intervene. The former sleeper remained absolutely still. What was wrong with her? No human could withstand a celestial voice at full roar!  
The dreamer stared into the Devil's eyes and it seemed to him that she made a decision, although later video recordings of the “interview” showed no noticeable change in her respiratory rate or posture. Softly, in a whisper so quiet as to be nearly undetectable, she replied “Your love is living another life. She'll return when it is her time, if she so wishes.”  
Lucifer Morningstar opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “How... how can I bring her back?”  
Now, her lips twitched in a barely discernible smile. “I'm sorry. You can't bring her back.  
“She has to come back.”  
The Devil felt his eyes burn, but not with the fires of Hell. His face showed his terrible fear of what the loss of Chloe Decker would mean.  
Now, the dreamer spoke so the entire room could hear her words: “Everything grows on the decay of what has gone before.”  
She rose to her feet, pulled her jacket around her shoulders and left the building.

 

**************************

On Wednesday, Detective Chloe Decker, homicide division, Los Angeles Police Department, had been ordered by her lieutenant to inform her partner, one Lucifer Morningstar, that his services as a civilian consultant were no longer needed.  
On the following Monday, she was fired.  
“This was not my idea, Decker,” Lieutenant Pierce told her. “It's nothing to do with Morningstar, either.  
“I shouldn't be telling you this, but you're being let go because you're a female. Looks like someone on the city council with more yank than the chief has decided there's no place for women in police investigations.”  
This had to be a joke – that attitude about women belonged back in the 1950s, not the 21st century! She had one of the best arrest/conviction rates in the department, and less than a month earlier was on her way to a commendation from the mayor. Now... fired?  
As a consolation, Pierce informed her that the department would be willing to transfer her to a job as a guard at the women's detention facility, two hours away from home, where guards were always needed. At about half her current salary.  
Unacceptable! Chloe Decker drove back to her apartment, locked herself in her living room and threw a tantrum of galactic proportions. By the time physical exhaustion took over, she was sorely in need of new dinnerware and glasses, the kitchen being reduced to plastic Flintstones mugs, paper plates and a garbage can's worth of broken pottery and lead crystal. Maybe I shouldn't have thrown Lucifer's Baccarat goblets, she thought.  
Still, the sound of that priceless glass shattering against her stone fireplace had been delicious.  
She collapsed on the couch and once again called her Tribe. Maze was incommunicado in pursuit of a bounty, but Linda and Ella agreed to meet her for drinks that evening at a local watering hole.

********************

“You could try calling a lawyer,” Linda suggested. “But... Chloe, have you been following the news?”  
No, she hadn't. The now-former detective believed she was exposed to more than enough of other people's problems during her work day; the rest of the world would have to take care of itself.  
“You should keep up with what's been happening,” Linda counseled. “Since Trump had that stroke and Pence took over, things have been changing fast, and not for the better.”  
With the help of her two friends and a pitcher of daiquiris, she learned that following the death of Notorious RBG a third extremely conservative justice had been appointed to the Supreme Court, and the right of gays and lesbians to marry was in danger. Additionally, a group challenging the Constitution's First Amendment (forbidding laws regulating or banning religion) had gained nearly a million new members in just a few days. The Tribe's usual festive celebration resembled more of a wake than a party, and by the end of the evening Chloe promised herself that she'd consider employment as a detention center guard.  
She had to pay rent somehow.  
In short order, and with the help of malleable members of both the House and Senate, America did a dance-worthy do-si-do to the Far Right. How far became noticeable when Trixie arrived home from school one afternoon and informed her mother that her class would be saying prayers twice a day, and why did she have to pray to any god who was mean to his kids?  
“WHAAAT?” her mother screamed. “Nobody has the right to make you pray in school, and who was mean to his kids?!”  
Trixie had been busy on the Internet, using her supposedly 'restricted' access to research Lucifer's family history and deciding that anyone who would throw their child out of the house for asking questions (and they weren't even bratty questions, like 'Who died and made you boss?') was a lousy parent. Chloe's heart ached at the mention of her former partner's name. He hadn't called her... and, yes, she could have called him, but she truly didn't want to hear “I told you so” in that snotty British accent. Her pride had been badly damaged, and it wasn't her fault she'd had to break off their business association. If he wanted to blame her and hold a grudge, let him!  
Dan called that night. “Chloe, it's getting weird around here. Maybe it's a good thing you're... uh, not having to put up with the shit they're dumping on us.”  
All female patrol officers had been either reassigned to lower-paying clerical positions or simply 'let go' without explanation. Union protests were ignored, and talk of a strike was answered with yet more firings and suspensions. “That's not all, babe,” Dan said. “Know what we have to do before our shift starts?  
“Pray! Can you believe that? They want us to pray that we won't get injured or killed while doing 'god's work'! Hell, better bulletproof vests would help us a lot more than some stupid prayer. I even told 'em that!”  
It was the last conversation she would have with her ex-husband for several weeks. He was getting out of his car at a restaurant the next evening when “unknown assailants” attacked him, beating him unconscious with bats and metal rods. The next day, she visited him at the hospital and cried at the sight of his battered, nearly unrecognizable face. She told their daughter that her dad had been in a hit-and-run car accident and wouldn't be able to take her for the next few weekends. But the former detective (now prison guard) promised she'd spend extra time with her girl at the park, and would Trixie be willing to learn how to manage a household like a grownup, to help Dan while he was recovering?  
As are most 10-year-olds, Beatrice Decker-Espinosa was several steps ahead of her mother. A couple of nights spent listening to her mom cry into her pillow motivated the Spawn to place a call to the one person she could always count on for help. Which was why Chloe Decker awoke one morning to the delicious smell of bacon and coffee wafting through the apartment.  
Because Trixie was forbidden to use the stove without an adult present (the consequence of a ruined pot and a house that reeked of burned oatmeal) and because the cheap coffee Chloe purchased didn't smell nearly as fragrant as the luxury Arabica preferred by a certain Devil, the detective was pretty sure who was creating miracles in her kitchen.  
“Good morning, Detective!” sang out a tall, dark-haired man sporting the beginnings of a full beard and... was Lucifer wearing a bandanna around his head? And a plaid flannel shirt over... jeans? Was this how an LSD flashback worked? To Chloe Decker's sleep-clouded vision, the always-dapper club owner looked, frankly, a little rough around the edges and seemed noticeably thinner, with dark circles under his eyes.  
She wanted to say something cutting, something to remind him that he could have called her, could have let her know they were still friends, that he understood the position she'd been put in by her former employer... So why did she stand there in the door, draped in a worn-out extra-large tee shirt and torn yoga pants, hair sticking out, no make-up, and then, like an idiot, start crying? What the fuck was up with that?  
But nothing had ever felt better than Lucifer Morningstar's arms locked around her, crushing her body against his, forcing the air out of both their lungs, and if the sound that filled the kitchen was two people sobbing, perhaps it was more of a comfort than a fright to the young girl now peeking around her bedroom door. Trixie Decker drank in the sight of Lucifer's face buried in her mom's hair and saw her mother's hands knotted in his shirt. This was grown-up business, which meant she could go back to bed and sleep until cartoons came on. They had it under control. She could be a kid again, and it was about time!  
God, adults were dumb.

****************************

In what seemed like no time at all, America changed. The nation's founders knew how quickly public opinion could spin on a dime; how rapidly support for a far-away king could curdle into hatred and fan the flames of revolution. They understood how it could go the other way, too, and thought they had put safeguards in place to protect the fragile democracy known as the United States. But even the geniuses who created the Constitution couldn't foresee the amount of chaos that corruption, laziness, raw greed, and the Russian intelligence community were capable of causing. Lux lost its license to sell liquor when the LA Board of Supervisors decided the owner failed to meet their very recent requirement for active membership in an approved religious organization, something that didn't go unremarked upon by Lucifer. “They want me to go to church, Chloe!” He was laughing, but the sound was closer to hysteria than hilarity.  
Mazikeen returned from an extended bounty hunt and began spending much of her time with Dr. Linda. It was rumored that her bounty-hunting had expanded to include enforcement services for various clients looking to settle scores, but she refused to confirm her activities one way or another. Linda was relieved to have her friend's companionship and invented ways to justify overlooking Maze's more questionable assignments.  
One morning found Lucifer, Chloe and Trixie standing in the kitchen eating bacon off a paper towel and drinking freshly squeezed orange juice, the oranges having been liberated minutes earlier from a citrus tree in the front yard. Even the 10 year old was drinking Lucifer's coffee, her mother having more pressing issues to contend with and overlooking the fact that Trixie had decided she was old enough to join the grown-ups at the big-kids table.  
“They're making us pray in school – twice a goddamn day!” the girl said, convinced she knew how adults talked to each other.  
Lucifer frowned and gave Chloe an “I'll handle this” look. “Beatrice, blasphemy is the last resort of low intellect,” he scolded. “I shall acquaint you with the words of Christopher Hitchens, an old comrade-in-arms who knew how to eviscerate the ignorant and brutal with a few well-chosen phrases while eschewing obscenities.”  
“Bless you,” the child replied. Her mother rolled her eyes; Lucifer had asked for that one.  
Beatrice grinned at him. “'Eschew' means avoid, and 'obfuscate' means not using big words when ordinary ones will do.  
“Lucifer, I'm in the fourth grade – I _know_ things!”  
That voice was so like Chloe's when she explained a fine point of procedural conduct that the Devil nearly hooted with laughter. “Yes, Miss Beatrice. I deserved that. Well played!”  
He and the child exchanged high fives and she reached for another slice of perfectly-fried bacon. Lucifer yanked the towel out of her reach. “Save some for your elders. Have a slice of buttered toast.”  
“But I _like_ bacon!”  
Lucifer started to respond in kind, and Chloe invoked her maternal privileges. “ _Raisin_ toast.”  
Raisin toast was a special treat, and Trixie grabbed a slice and trotted off to review the morning's televised entertainment. Lucifer and Chloe were given a two-minute reprieve until she returned to the kitchen, loudly clearing her throat in case the grown-ups were getting all gross-out kissy-face with each other.  
“There's nothing on, Mom.”  
Chloe interrupted her conversation with the chef. “Trix, it's Saturday morning – it's all cartoons!”  
The girl shook her head. “Nope. Churchy stuff. Praying.”  
Lucifer and Chloe shared a startled look and headed for the living room. The child had to be wrong.

***************

  
Trixie was not wrong. One by one, television stations gradually dropped their standard local programming in favor of daytime shows with religious themes. Many were blandly generalized, but more than a few focused heavily on conservative Christian theology.  
Gradually, networks followed the trend, and whether it was based on actual viewer preference or pressure from newly appointed government censors was never determined. But the broadcast networks brought back shows like Touched by an Angel and then scheduled remakes with a similar approach to dramatic storytelling. Religious experts were included on nearly every political talk show, and commentator-comedians like John Oliver and Bill Maher were dropped. Samantha Bee and Rachael Maddow disappeared from prime time, along with other liberal, progressive voices.  
All public funding was pulled from NPR.  
Public schools approved bible-study classes and began integrating intelligent design into their curriculum. State universities awarded degrees in Creation Science.  
When Roe v. Wade was overturned, Chloe literally gnashed her teeth to the point that Lucifer feared for her dental work. Immigration laws were tightened and work visas were cancelled for employees from countries with a majority religion other than Christianity.  
The Wall was fully funded and public health care turned over entirely to individual states.  
Certain websites were unusually slow to load and then simply disappeared. Facebook shut down all its atheist pages and banned positive mention of Islam and eastern religions. Over at the IRS, unapproved religious non-profits lost their tax-exempt status.  
Vladimir Putin visited America and stayed in the executive suite at Mar-a-Lago. He was thought to have enjoyed his tour of Disney World in the company of the recovering President, but no reporters were permitted to attend the event.

Then the violence began.

**********************

When unidentified militia dressed to resemble members of the Knights Templar crucified hundreds of kidnapped gays and lesbians outside San Francisco, and after a sniper (as yet, still at large) shot and critically wounded the astrophysicist and prominent atheist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chloe Decker was sure she'd seen the worst that could happen. Lucifer warned her that he'd been through this before and it was going to get uglier before it got better. He'd planned to (eventually) show his detective the wings his Father was forcing on him, but it was Trixie who outed the Devil to her mother during an argument the two adults were having about history.  
“Lucifer, you can't possibly know what you're talking about!” Chloe insisted, when he described – in elaborate detail -- the petty politics that tore apart the court of Henry VIII.  
MOM!” Her daughter vehemently disagreed. “Lucifer is the Devil. He _does_ know stuff!  
“Lucifer, show her your wings.”  
Lucifer was mortified, but Beatrice would have none of his protestations. “Do it!” she commanded, and crossed her arms. And, as always, Lucifer Morningstar was helpless against the wishes of the Decker women.  
Chloe turned to scold her offspring for speaking rudely and heard a soft whump. She spun around to see her civilian consultant sporting an enormous pair of ethereal white wings, glowing with divine radiance. There was simply no other way to describe them.  
Her jaw dropped. The owner of the wings looked embarrassed. A pottery vase fell over with a crash and shattered on the floor (those wings were huge!).  
“Wh... huh?” said Chloe Decker.  
“Toldja,” said her Spawn.  
“Sorry,” said the Devil.  
Thus did a former Los Angeles homicide detective learn that while everything in the bible wasn't accurate, a few sections had an uncomfortably close relationship with reality. God was real. And her best friend and lover was the Devil, also the formerly favorite son, banished from heaven for questioning his Father's judgement, yadda yadda yadda, as the wings' owner so tactfully phrased it.  
Once Chloe had inspected the miraculous feathers and determined they were firmly attached to real wings which were somehow attached to Lucifer, she required a few minutes alone to process what she had just learned.  
Lucifer and Trixie went to get ice cream.  
When they returned, Chloe was holding tightly to both her sanity and a drink. “How did you know?” she demanded of Trixie.  
“Mom, I just knew. He _told_ us and _told_ us. Grownups don't want to believe things, sometimes.” And she and Lucifer shared an eyeroll.  
Chloe shook her head. What else had she been missing? Best not to ask.

******************

Soon after revealing his identity to Chloe, Lucifer abandoned Lux and the penthouse, boxing up his possessions and moving in with his detective and her Spawn. He put the Steinway in storage and purchased an electronic keyboard, which Trixie discovered was capable of creating “arena sound” and reproducing rock music at earsplitting decibels while duplicating lead and base guitar simultaneously. The store salesperson had wondered why anyone would buy a top-of-the-line keyboard without an equally impressive sound board and speakers to match; after a quick demonstration involving a combination of Bach and Guns N' Roses, the Devil concurred.  
Lucifer taught Trixie the fingering for Stairway to Heaven, Sympathy for the Devil and Highway to Hell, but Chloe drew the line at death metal. Still, it amused her tremendously that her daughter was becoming a classic rock kind of girl.  
The Devil grew a full beard and let his hair curl to his shoulders, tying it back with the bandana. “You look like a pirate!” Trixie informed him, and around the house he became “Captain Lucifer.” When President Pence spoke in favor of making church membership a requirement for certain government jobs, he replaced his Louboutines with hiking boots and his bespoke Italian suits with jeans and work shirts. His “name” was now Lucas Marsten, and he had the identity papers to prove it, along with a low-income backstory, a West Texas accent and time spent earning a living as a long-haul trucker.  
“We have to blend, my dear detective,” he counseled her. “Who we were is not who it's safe to be right now.”  
Chloe wrote it off as unjustified paranoia until Trixie was assaulted at school by 7th graders and “baptized” against her will. She did not submit gracefully, leaving one boy with a torn nostril and another missing a large patch of hair above one ear, causing Maze to beam with pride. When Chloe complained to the principal, she was informed that children who refused to participate in mandatory school activities could expect to be singled out for mistreatment. The “mandatory activity” in question was bible class, during which all students were required to participate in “witnessing” for the power of the Lord.  
Chloe Decker was fully aware of the “power of the Lord,” but felt it would be better not to mention that fact to the principal. Trixie flatly refused to return to school, and Lucifer volunteered to “home school the Spawn, _if_ she can keep up.” Her mother was uncertain, but her daughter and the Devil convinced the detective (now working two 16-hour shifts every week as a prison guard and sleeping in her car) that a trial run was called for. After six months of dealing with the voracious mind of a pre-adolescent human female, the Devil was close to regretting his offer. Beatrice could now speak passable Russian, had college level reading comprehension and was working her way through introductory trigonometry. She was studying a math problem one evening when Lucifer noticed she was praying and walked right into it.  
“Dad is notorious for ignoring requests for assistance, young lady. What are you asking him?”  
“Nothing much,” the girl replied. “Just hoping for a sine from above.” She grinned, and Lucifer realized he'd unleashed a beast on the world.  
Beatrice had a memory like a bear trap, few inhibitions about correcting adults who misspoke, and her arguments would have given Socrates a headache.  
Meanwhile, Lucifer woke each morning to his detective's lovely smile and fell asleep each night with her curled in his arms. The Devil had never been happier.  
Of course, it couldn't last.

******************

The prison population expanded beyond what police reports could justify. Chloe was sharply aware than many of the newcomers were housed in 'isolation barracks' that had been recently constructed a quarter of a mile away from the general inmate population and kept separate by concertina wire barricades. The regular guards were told not to interact with the “special” prisoners, but she was curious and managed to talk briefly with two of them as they were hauling garbage to the communal burn pits.  
She came home shaking with fury. “Lucifer, they're _Muslim_ women! They've done nothing but worship what our government says is the 'wrong' god! They're being accused of sneaking into the US, but the two I spoke with were born in Sacramento!  
“What's going on in our country?”  
Lucifer hoped he'd hidden his growing concern from his women. He was driving truck full-time now, but didn't limit himself to hauling merchandise for manufacturing suppliers. Almost without discussing the matter, his supervisor at the terminal was escorting small groups of two and three to certain trucks and signaling for Lucifer to help them climb in and hide among the boxes and bales. The refugees, each carrying no more than a backpack, curled up silently to endure the ride south across the Mexican border. Trump's Wall, originally designed to keep illegal immigrants _out_ , was now being used to keep American citizens _in_.  
And Mexico had not yet coughed up a peso to pay for it.  
It wasn't common knowledge, but the Devil noticed that Border Patrol agents had begun turning back an increasing number of shoppers and tourists attempting to cross into their southern neighbor, insisting “Computer's down... there's a security alert... come back tomorrow.”  
In an about-face from the past, imports from Mexico into the US received minimal attention. With sufficient bribes to the guards, Lucifer and his shipments passed easily into what was formerly considered a poverty-stricken third world “shit-hole” by Washington, but which had now become a sanctuary for persecuted minorities. The passengers were off-loaded a few miles south of the fence and disappeared into the desert as silently as they'd arrived. Some were followers of Islam desperate to avoid deportation back to their home countries; others were American-born but had the misfortune of belonging to families with Middle Eastern ancestry.  
Chloe received a phone call one evening from her mother. Penelope Decker was on an “extended vacation” south of Cancun, where she stayed in a small beach hotel and volunteered as an English teacher for a local public school. “Honey, I want you to think about having Trixie come stay with me for a few months,” she told her daughter carefully. “Think of the cross-cultural opportunities for her!  
“Perhaps you and Lucifer could come for a visit, as well. This is such a lovely area...”  
When Chloe told her mother that the chances of Trixie visiting a foreign country without her mom present were between none and less than zero, Penny changed the subject and began talking about a movie she'd had a small role in many years earlier. The segue baffled the detective until she remembered the plot involved a Jewish family's desperate flight from eastern Europe to America as World War II raged around them. It was 12-year-old Penny's first film role, and even though she didn't have any lines to say, the experience had left a lasting impression.  
“Think carefully. about her coming down here, darling,” Penny concluded. “We're on the beach; there's so much for her to do, so much for her to see and hear. Oh, I'd love to have all of you come be with me!”  
That wasn't the way Penny usually talked. It almost sounded as if she was sending... a message? Calls coming in from outside the US were picked up by computers, but surely it was next to impossible for the government to listen in on everyone's conversations? “We think they pick up trigger words, depending on where the calls are coming from,” Lucifer told her that night as they lay together in bed, arms and legs tangled.  
“You and Penelope weren't speaking Spanish or one of the Arabic languages, so unless you said words like 'escape' or 'guns', you should be safe.  
“But, Chloe, think about what she said, please. I see what's going on down at the border crossing. Last month, they were just turning people back. This afternoon, they were off-loading additional barricades and fencing. I'm seeing guys in combat gear, too, but they don't look like military. If they're civilian militia, there'll be shootings!”  
He sighed, and she'd never heard that tone of defeat in his voice. ”Before heading back from Tiajuana, I sometimes stop by a cantina the drivers use and listen to their conversations. It's getting worse, not better. People are sending little children – younger than Beatrice - in the back of our trucks, traveling alone. Sometimes, they have family waiting for them.  
“And sometimes they don't, which means they wait... I give them money and take them to a church I know about, if they'll go with me.”  
She sat up, pushing the tangled sheets aside. “A... _church_ , Lucifer?”  
The Devil nodded. “Catholic. Incense, candles, Latin mass. And, yes, it still makes me uncomfortable. But they feed them and give them a bed until... whoever is waiting for them shows up.” His face was drawn down into sadness. “I don't want to send Beatrice to your mother. She belongs here, with us.  
“But, my love, the window of opportunity is closing. If she doesn't leave soon, we may not be able to get her out. Visas are only being issues to people with ID cards that have that damn fish on it! Ours look good but they won't stand up to a security scan. I wouldn't trust them to get us out of the country.”  
The detective was thinking over her mother's obscure message when Dr. Linda appeared at her front door the next day. Steam was coming out of her friend's ears, and her eyes were sparking with barely-contained fury. Months earlier, the Pence administration had legitimized so-called gay conversion therapy involving pseudoscientific attempts to change people's sexual preferences from gay, lesbian or bisexual to 'straight'. Patients, many of them younger than 18, were subjected to intense psychological, physical and often spiritual interventions. The resulting abuse had an ugly history of not only failing to work but causing severe and frequently permanent damage to victims who were traumatized by overly-aggressive 'therapists' with minimal credentials.  
The government's next step and the reason for Linda's righteous anger was a new policy that not only permitted but _required_ mental health professionals to offer conversion as part of their practice.  
“I'll be damned to hell if I do that!” Linda shouted. “I don't care how many times the politicians say it works; I know better!”  
As Chloe listened to her tribey rage and kick the furniture, the needle on the 'level of concern' meter she kept tucked in her head swung from somewhere in the yellow range to well within the red. The network “news”, now proudly pre-approved by authorities who curated what the nation saw and heard, had – just last night – reported a hit-and-run accident in Boston that caused the death of the last liberal Supreme Court justice. Earlier in the week, child pornography had been discovered on a computer belonging to a powerful and highly respected constitutional scholar who stood up to the nation's growing theocratic tendencies; he had denied any knowledge of the material, but was under intense pressured to resign his post at Harvard Law School.  
Trixie and Lucifer were studying the French Revolution. The family had curled under blankets one evening and watched a DVD of Les Miserables, motivating her daughter to leap to her feet and sing along proudly, fist raised; she _did_ 'hear the people sing'!  
Lucifer sat, frozen. Chloe turned to look at him, and saw the muscles in his jaw knotted with rage. His face had turned to stone, a sign of the Devil on the edge of an explosion. Putting her hand to his cheek, she asked “Love, what's wrong? What is it?”  
He shook his head, whispered 'later' as he rubbed his face so Beatrice wouldn't see his unusual reaction.  
But, later... oh, dear God, how could You have let that happen? the horrors, in the name of freedom...?  
Lucifer had been part of the French Revolution, of course, along with several other uprisings in defiance of entrenched power. Her Devil had seen the desperate and starving stand against the aristocracy who had so foolishly abused them, had seen them rebel against the rich and powerful who had ground them into dust under mirror-bright boots and silk slippers. He'd been on the barricades in Paris and joined in storming the Bastille, but stood, aghast, as innocent and guilty alike were tied tightly to boards and loaded in tumbrils that bounced mercilessly over the cobblestones as the victims were taken to the guillotines.  
“Chloe, they couldn't move! They were cocooned in ropes, flinging their heads back and forth, crying out, screaming, begging for someone to listen, that they hadn't committed the crimes...” His voice broke. “We... we birthed a revolution, and our brave ideals turned feral and savaged the body. I though, maybe, _this_ time... but it never is 'this time'; the fine goals and brave glory always succumb to the lust for suffering and pain. You humans love your vengeance so much...”  
He buried his face against her chest and groaned. She wrapped him in her arms and legs, pulling him against her with what strength she had and let him scream out the ghastly memories, the smell of blood congealing in Parisian gutters, the sight of the heads mounted on stakes and paraded down the street as the decapitated bodies were thrown on the fires.  
Few remembered that the entire city had smelled of roasting pork for days.  
He mumbled something. “What, Lucifer?”  
She had never seen him this frustrated, this broken. “It _was_ 'the best of times and the worst of times'. We had... something fine, and we let it slip through our fingers.”  
He'd been there. He'd _really been there_ three centuries ago, but not as a causation of chaos. Lucifer wanted desperately to birth real change in the species, wanted to witness his Father's frail, pathetic creations become something more than intended. He was watching as a thousand years of Tsarist autocracy collapsed with the abdication of Nicholas II – “at gunpoint, you understand; Nicky wasn't leaving without a fight until they threatened to shoot his wife and children”. Lucifer had watched and cheered as Russian soldiers – arm in arm with the urban working class – moved to dominate the parliamentary Duma. He said it had been inevitable they'd turn on each other, that he should have expected how wealthy capitalists and aristocrats who could trace their bloodlines back before the birth of Peter the Great would be overthrown and murdered by Bolsheviks, men who were rich in courage but entirely unprepared to rule a country or chart a people's destiny.  
“They thought I was Gregori Rasputin! _Me!_ ” he shouted, and Chloe hushed him to keep from waking Trixie. “That damned monk was mad, but Alexandra wouldn't listen to anyone but her filthy pet pig.”  
. _..who is_ alexandra _?_ Chloe wondered.  
“She was Nicky's wife, the Tsarina, granddaughter of Queen Victoria,” Lucifer explained, and the detective shivered. The man she loved had _known_ these people, had _met_ them! He was living history and that fact terrified her while at the same time somehow making her feel as if she'd been given a treasure beyond any price.  
Far into the night, Lucifer Morningstar, archangel and once the most-beloved son of God, clung to her as if she was his only lifeline to sanity, and told her what he'd witnessed. He'd sat with her nation's founding fathers (“the name I used is on your Declaration of Independence, and I'll let you figure out which one it is”) and quietly guided them to created the Constitution of the United States... “closest thing to a sacred document as you'll ever find coming from the human brain, my dear detective.” He had known Ben Franklin! …and only grinned when she asked him about Poor Richard's Almanac (“Just call me Rick”).  
Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward... he'd seen it happening and watched millions fall dead from starvation as what had been a timely rebellion against entrenched power now became a killing machine. “Americans don't know what it means when there's a famine and people send their youngest children to live with the neighbors,” he said, then refused to elaborate.  
“You humans just can't get it right,” he sighed. “You fight and die to overthrow the exploiters and then turn into what you overthrew when it's your turn to govern.”  
Perhaps a human cursed with immortality would have given up in disgust and returned to Hell to rule over damned souls and demonic tormentors until the end of time. But Lucifer Morningstar was made of sterner stuff, and could not stay away from the ongoing disaster that was the _homo sapien_ species. Chloe realized that for some unknown reason he was bonded to her kind for good and for evil, always hopeful, always disappointed, ever despairing but returning over and over again to participate in the making of history.  
His determination terrified her in its eroticism. He loves us, she realized. He laughs and scolds and makes fun of our foolishness, but he truly _loves_ us and the way we keep... trying. Perhaps this beautiful man bearing the nightmarishly scarred face is himself a god, is the holy, the sacred, the numinous. Was she loved by a god? And did it really matter so much what he was? Was all that mattered how he touched her, how he held her, how he returned to her each evening and cared for her child by another man as if she was his own flesh and blood, and how their very survival was of utmost importance to him...  
She was no longer frightened _of_ him but frightened _for_ him. One fragile... man? No, more than a man. But so, so vulnerable to the coarse violence her kind was all too capable of. How many times had humans broken his great heart, and how often had he returned to us? The thought stunned her.  
 _...ah, my_ lucifer _..._  
And the sun rose over the LA basin once again as she laid her head against his chest and fell asleep to his heartbeat, his scent filling her head, and for some reason she drifted off knowing all was as it should be.

*****************

The following day, they sent Trixie to live in Mexico with her grandmother. The girl first refused, then cried and begged, then simply sat and would not speak or move. “Baby, it's not safe here,” Chloe explained, all maternal patience exhausted by hours of pleading and scolding. “You've seen the news, you know what they're doing to people who speak against the church.”  
Finally, Lucifer took over. “Child.” She opened one eye and gave him a scathing glare that spoke volumes. “Beatrice, there are things your mother and I must do. We cannot risk you being harmed.”  
“I'm _not_ a child. I'm eleven! I can fight!”  
Lucifer nodded, and the sadness in his face broke Chloe's heart. “Yes, you can. And you will. But your fight will be more difficult than the one we're taking on.”  
“Then, why? Why can't I help you?”  
Lucifer leaned against the wall and slid down to sit beside her. “Your fight will be to pick up the pieces and rebuild this country. Ours is to delay the enemy, to slow their advance and wear them out. When they're broken, when all their holy ideas and grand plans are lying on the ground, you will be ready to come in and clean up the mess, rebuild, make something new and stronger.  
“Today's fighters will be too old by then, Beatrice. It's a job for people like you, with dreams and hopes. Your job will be to learn how to put a culture back together, to make it better than it was. There are other people your age gathering in places like Mexico, waiting for us to do our jobs so they can take over when it's time.”  
She wiped her nose, sniffed and looked up at him. “When will it be time? How will I know?”  
He shook his head. “You won't know... until you do. I'm sorry, that's not much of an answer, but that is how this sort of thing seems to happen.  
“You have important work to accomplish, Beatrice. Do you remember when we first met?”  
She nodded. “I'd gotten in trouble at school for punching that mean girl who said mom was gonna die because of her job, and you scared the... crap out of her!  
“You told me your name was Lucifer, like the Devil.”  
He nodded, suddenly unable to force words past the lump in his throat. “I... ahem... yes, I did. You do know I thought you were awful, don't you?”  
Beatrice Decker-Espinosa grinned and nodded. “That's why you like me. I'm awful!  
“Lucifer, do I really have a job I'm gonna have to do? Is it hard?”  
“Harder than anything anyone's ever done, child.” He put his fine pianist's hands on her face. “You will have to build a new civilization on the ruins of the old one, and make sure it's strong enough not to be torn apart by greedy, selfish, stupid people. Are you brave enough to do that?”  
She nodded, pushing her cheek against his palm like a cat.  
“Do you promise not to give up?”  
Another nod.  
“Promise to keep learning and studying? You'll need to be very smart to do this.”  
“I know. I will.”  
Then, for the first time in the history of the universe, the Devil opened his arms to a human child and Beatrice crawled up against him, tucking her head under his chin and sobbing helplessly.  
“No, love, none of that now. No tears. No tears.”  
 _...right,_ lucifer _. that's why you're wiping your face with your sleeve, isn't it? Isn't it, my love? big, bad scary devil..._  
And Chloe crumpled to the floor and wrapped her arms around her lover and her daughter, trying desperately and failing in her attempt not to cry like a baby.  
That afternoon they drove the girl along with Linda and Mazikeen to the airport, where Lucifer paid a private pilot to fly them south of the border, where they would meet up with Penelope. “We'll be flyin' in the grass,” the pilot promised, and Lucifer told Chloe he was an old drug smuggler familiar with safe routes close enough to the ground (and did he have to tell her than meant only _20 feet?_ ) to avoid Border Patrol radar. She kissed her daughter goodbye, watched the little plane disappear over the horizon and remained calm until they returned to the apartment. Then Chloe Decker collapsed in shrieking agony and refused to be comforted.  
Hours later, she stumbled from their bedroom to see Lucifer sitting on the sofa, head in hands. “Did we do the right thing, Chloe?” he asked her. “Will Dan thank us for this?”  
No one knew where Dan was. He'd been released from the hospital too early, only partially recovered from the savage beating he'd sustained nearly a year earlier. Detective Daniel Espinosa then vanished on his way home. No one had seen or heard from him since, and Chloe had been frantic with worry. Lucifer turned the city upside down in an effort to receive some word on his frenemy's whereabouts; finally, an alcoholic street person stumbled forward to say he'd seen a guy with a bandage on his head being pulled into a van on what he thought was the same night Dan had vanished. No, he couldn't remember what the van looked like or if any words had been exchanged, his brain synapses having been too fried by years of alcohol abuse to retain more than scraps of memory.  
Trixie, of course, never gave up hope and wrote letters to her father on their birthdays and at Christmas. Chloe mailed them, addressed to “Daniel Espinosa, My Dad, the Police Detective.” They had nothing else.  
So Penelope's call the next day lifted the dark cloud that had settled over the couple with the girl's departure. The threesome had arrived safely, if somewhat rattled by their low-altitude escape, and Trixie had decided she was going to be a pilot and rescue refugees just as soon as she was old enough to get her license. “If you can believe this, she's talking about teaching a first grade class at our local school!” Penny told her daughter.  
“Mom, Lucifer, you gotta come see this place!” the girl chimed in as Penny handed her the phone. “There's an ocean and a beach, and we live in a hotel with a pool! It's way cool... and I already miss you guys. Seriously, get down here!”  
Chloe's lip trembled when she ended the call, and Lucifer put an arm around her. “Maybe you should make the trip down there soon, my dear,” he advised. “What's left around here for you?”  
The answer was, of course, sitting next to her. Lucifer refused to leave now that the stream of refugees was turning into a river. He had begun by ferrying people to safety one or two souls at a time and never more than twice a week. Now, they were coming to the loading terminal in groups of 10 to 15, and he was making the drop-off south of Tiajuana every afternoon.   
And still they came...gays, fleeing the purges and burnings in San Francisco, the Castro District nothing but smouldering rubble …two dissident Catholic priests ...the kindly lesbian witches from Santa Cruz who gave him a lovely silver pentagram (do you think they knew who I was, Chloe? I think they know you're a good man, Lucifer) ...the local politician who had waited to speak out against the brewing storm until speaking out brought ruin on his name ...a group of multi-denominational leaders who refused to countenance violence ...families, children traveling alone, individuals, the elderly who remembered Tailgunner Joe and the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s…  
Lucifer made sure to drive a different truck every day, and he carried enough cash to bribe all but the most staunchly patriotic border guards. But it was not border guards who brought what had become known as The Devil's Railroad to an end.  
Somebody talked. Somebody was caught and tortured. Or, more likely, saw their family threatened with death and gave their driver up to buy another day of life for someone they loved. Lucifer was always home before dark. On the rare occasion when he was running late, he called. They had their own code, devised by Ella and based on the books and music Chloe loved; she'd ask him the name of a song she'd heard and hum some nonsense noise (she couldn't sing, which amused him greatly) and he'd come up with a song title that told her the reason why he was running behind schedule and when she could expect him.  
So when the phone stayed silent Chloe Decker began to sweat, even though the Southern California fog was rolling in off the Pacific and she should, by rights, be shivering.  
 _...lucifer, where are you? out of tower range? still in_ mexico _? please please be in_ mexico _..._  
She left her phone on charge and refused to step away from it. _...ring, you bastard, ring..._  
The following day her phone remained silent, and she decided to risk driving past the truck terminal. Her heart stopped at the sight of familiar police vehicles, now with bright gold crosses hand-painted on their doors, parked in front of the main office. It looked like a mop-up, with investigators completing the last of their paperwork and securing the entrance with heavy locks. Ubiquitous yellow perimeter tape dangling from fences and trucks indicated that mass arrests had happened earlier. She drove as far as a nearby park, opened the car door and vomited onto the pavement. He'd been caught. The terminal had been smuggling refugees and those fleeing Pence's 'Christian soldiers' for months, and somehow the authorities had gotten word of it.  
But... perhaps he'd ditched his phone? Supposedly, they could track everyone's cells, although Lucifer used burners when he was on the road. Maybe he was hiding... she could drive south along I-5, following the route he took every morning and each evening...  
She drove home and turned on the television; maybe there'd be a story on the mass arrests. She had to wait for the 5 pm news, and there... oh dear GODNONONONO ** _GOD NO!!!_** Two huge militiamen were holding her Devil by the arms and dragging him into a black van ...where were they taking him? what was he being charged with? could she get him out? oh god why did we wait so long to leave? i'll _get you out_ lucifer _..._  
The detective forced herself into what her partner called Full Investigator Mode and pulled their untraceable darknet-dedicated laptop out of a cavity he'd created beneath the storage shed. Taking it to a nearby fast food restaurant with public wifi access, she used tails and the onion router to access police information the public was forbidden to see. Dan's old password allowed her to scroll through reams of meaningless data until she finally found his name... but why weren't any charges listed? What? Why hadn't Lucifer been booked? What were they doing with him?  
Her phone chose that moment to ring, and she almost ignored it. Still, it could be Lucifer, and she dug it out of her jacket to discover an unknown caller was trying to reach her. “Tribey?” Ella's voice was barely more than a whisper. “Tribey? You there?”  
Ella was now director of laboratory research at the precinct, thanks to her obsessive attention to detail and her regular attendance at Mass each Sunday. She'd quietly passed the occasional piece of information to her old friends, figuring rightly that working on the inside was a better way to bring down the power structure than outright defiance.  
“Yeah, I'm here. We've got problems.”  
“I'll say you do!” the little tech replied. “They grabbed... our friend last night and he's being held downtown. I think they've got something planned for him, and I don't like what I'm hearing.”  
Chloe went cold, her stomach dropping like an elevator with a snapped cable. “What? Aren't they pressing charges and setting bail?”  
“Don't think so. It's much worse... they want to set an example. The TV stations are sending camera crews to the old football stadium on Colfax, the one that was scheduled to be torn down? The new mayor is having a crew put up what look like vertical railroad ties, and the guys down at the jail have trustees with wheelbarrows bringing in...”  
“And what? What?”  
Ella whimpered. “They've been trucking in fist-size rocks, dumping 'em in front of those posts. Look, I gotta go before they start wondering where I am.”  
The detective clung desperately to the familiar voice. “Wait! What d'ya mean, rocks?”  
Ella cleared her throat, and her voice rose to normal volume, indicating someone in authority was standing nearby and probably listening in. “Yeah, he always loved that character; wasn't his name Old Deuteronomy?” She emphasized the word, then paused for a few beats, as if Chloe had spoken. “Right, he was just out of college; first Broadway show. I think he was 21... 21? Yeah, that's right.  
“Okay, gotta go.” The call ended, leaving Chloe listening to a hollow echo that might or might not indicate recording equipment in use.  
Her tribey could sound like a dingbat, but Ella's mind was a razor blade in spite of her speech patterns, which occasionally had trouble keeping up with her thoughts. She was the one who developed the code Lucifer and Chloe used to communicate when others might be listening in to their conversations.  
Lucifer would have known immediately what the little techie was referring to, but Chloe had to drag Dan's copy of the King James Bible off the shelf and struggle to remember if Old Deuteronomy... wasn't he a cat in that Broadway show? A few minutes of trying to force her shaking hands to turn the tissue-thin pages finally gave her the correct section in the Old Testament. Okay, Deuteronomy, Chapter 21, Verse 21:  
“And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.”  
No. No. It couldn't be. Ella was wrong and Chloe was jumping to the worst possible conclusion. This was America, where the accused received a fair trial and the sentence was neither cruel or unusual... but these were not kind or usual times. Somehow, Lucifer had been forced to show them... what he was. She had to stop them. Stop this horror, somehow. Surely the police would step in?  
But it was the _police_ , working with the local militia, who had arrested him and were arranging his... oh god, his execution while she stood in their living room, shaking and useless. Pull it together, Decker! You have to stop this before you lose another person you love to the shitload of crazy that has taken over your country!  
Lucifer and Chloe had tried watching The Walking Dead, but eventually he told her than Negan, vicious as he was, wouldn't have had a chance against the monsters who always stepped forward when civilizations fell apart. “They'll come out of the woodwork every time, Detective,” he'd said sadly. “War, pain, fear, famines and plagues are their calling cards, and the worst among you is drawn to them. They look on crisis as a ladder, a golden opportunity.  
“They'll be the ones telling people what they want to hear, using soothing words and big promises to make ordinary men and women commit atrocities.”  
And they had the man she loved. Her Lucifer was a prisoner of the monsters, soon to be another of their victims. She remembered Dan bonding with him over one of their favorite movies, and the popular phrase they loved to mimic. Now it was her turn.  
“Not on my watch!” the detective snarled, and strapped on her shoulder holster and ballistic vest. This would end soon, for good or for evil, but she was damned if she was going to be a grieving bystander to a murder.

******************  
   
Thousands of people were streaming into the stadium by the time she parked her car (illegally) in someone's driveway and headed for the entrance. Militia members in camouflage shirts and mirrored sunglasses were trying to give the appearance of official approval to the upcoming event; she almost asked the one who glanced at her identification if he was expecting a failure to communicate, but the jerk was anxious to get inside before the main attraction began and let her through without comment. Her time around her lover had taught her the value of keeping a rein on her tongue. Maybe if he'd done the same she wouldn't be here now, but instead with him at home, safely in his arms.  
The detective felt a wash of shame flow over her at the thought. Lucifer was what he was, and she loved _him_ , not some imagined ideal of the “perfect” man. She secretly delighted in his snark and sarcasm, and how he let her take the lead and make the decisions that affected both of them more often than any traditional concept of male machismo would have permitted.  
They were a team, and without him she'd go back to being half of a missing whole, emotionally crippled and trudging through her days instead of dancing. She felt as if she danced whenever she was with Lucifer. Even when he wasn't around she somehow knew 'Chloe Decker' was in the back of his mind. He'd called her his “magnetic north”, and it took a trip to the internet to learn just how essential magnetic north was to all living creatures. It moved, it flowed, it changed, as she did, yet Lucifer was constantly aligned with her.  
It frightened her a little, that fierce love, that level of devotion that kept him living in a culture that would be homicidally hostile to him if they knew...  
But they _did_ know, now. They had their Satan, their Devil, their symbol of all evil who made them buy that dress, steal that car, molest little boys, rape mothers and grandmothers, burn and torture and shame the 'different' for causes that the 'different' had no say over. Those “good people.” Those “patriotic folks who love their country.” And who was shouting those words as she thought them? God, it had already begun! A hoarse voice, screaming in the classic praise-the-lord-say-hallelujah gospel beat was coming over the PA system, and Chloe followed the crowds streaming onto the bleachers. She chose a space on the field somewhere near the center line and watched the human circus befitting a Roman Caesar as it unfolded in all its ghastly glory.  
She rested her arm against the familiar lump of the automatic, tucked safely beneath her specially-tailored blazer so the casual observer wouldn't notice she was carrying. Guess whose idea _that_ had been? Lucifer's reasoning was sound, though: “If you're going to carry a gun, Chloe, you need the best equipment and to be the best shot possible.”  
His solemn expression and direct eye contact told the detective he was deadly serious. “You owe it to the gun. Think of every gun as a symbol of its meaning, history and energy. The gun is the most powerful talisman you humans have, and you invented it! You didn't dig it up out of the ground, you didn't find it washed up on shore, you created it. A talisman isn't good or bad; only the person holding it is good or bad.  
“Always honor that power, because it amplifies whatever your intent is when you pull it out.”  
He took her in his arms. “You scare me, sometimes. All you humans.” He shook his head, bemused. “What hath Father wrought?”  
And what his Father had wrought was now strutting across the stage and receiving the microphone from the announcer, who gave a sycophantic bow. Chloe hoped her face didn't show her disgust. This was a man of God, receiving adulation like an entitled actor? No... he was a politician. She remembered seeing his face on the news the other night _...the last newscast we watched together_... but paying no attention to his words. Lucifer had said something about his flock wanting the gasbag to run for office. He'll probably get elected, with morons like this voting... and, suddenly, it hit her: This wasn't about punishing evil or destroying sin. Lucifer's death was a goddamn political rally! She'd probably see slogans like 'Remember who saved your souls from hellfire and damnation when it's time to vote!'  
...you fucker! she thought. You'd murder a good man just to get your ugly ass elected?  
Chloe's face took on a hardness few had seen. The only killing shot she'd ever made was into Malcolm Graham, and she'd never lost a minute's sleep over sending him back to hell. Even as an atheist, she'd believed wholeheartedly in eternal suffering for people like Malcolm.  
That killing shot had a good chance of being repeated today. “Not on my watch,” the detective snarled, and began making her way to the roped-off center of the arena. Whatever was going to happen would happen there, with the posts – rings fastened to them – and the rocks.

And the woman with a gun.

 

***********************

 

During the next hour, Chloe Decker distracted herself by studying crowd dynamics. Lucifer had taught Trixie and her mother how crowds historically behaved, how the potential for panic was directly related to the number of bodies crammed into a fixed area and that they'd be safer on a bicycle in a buffalo stampede than trying to escape a tightly crowded area when people were panicking. “You can't get out of it by fighting your way through; you'll have to go up,” he'd said.  
They stared at him, baffled. “Crowd-surfing. Climbing up using their bodies and run across their heads.”  
Chloe was shocked. “Lucifer, you can't be serious!”  
He was. “Chloe, you won't be able to move through or around people. The only escape route you have is on top.” He didn't say how unlikely their chances of survival would be, even if they made it onto a sea of shoulders and heads with snapping teeth.  
“Avoid tight crowds whenever possible. If nobody panics, you'll be okay. But someone always panics, and I don't want you injured...” or killed, the detective added to herself. She hated crowds, but Trixie was getting to the age when rock concerts were premiere entertainment. It was blind luck that there hadn't been any concert crush deaths since the Who performed so many years ago.  
Did they even have rock concerts in Mexico? Probably. Canada and Mexico were the new venues for popular music since edgy rock and roll had been banned in America for encouraging “wanton sexual behavior and drug use.” They could have used a little of that old time rock and roll here; the crowd was getting restless after the interminable sermons that now had people giving stinkeye to each other and preparing to pick fights.  
Apparently the white-haired holy roller caught the change in attitude and decided to wrap it up. Time for the main event...  
The tepid applause burst into a thunderstorm of approval as the preacher signaled someone on the sidelines, and the surrounding militia held their assault rifles at ready, partially to show off their discipline and partially to keep the crowd back. Two by two, pairs of huge guards appeared, each with a prisoner held by the upper arms while dangling helplessly between them. The first two were women... Chloe looked closer. No, they were men, but dressed and made up to look like women. Neither was Lucifer. The pastor began quoting yet another biblical prohibition against men lying with men … oh, give me a break and say the damn word, you pompous prick! she thought, and the crowd screamed its derision.  
A stone someone had brought in sailed through the air, striking a militiamen in the head and sending two others moving into the crowd, gunbutts swinging. _holy shit, they mean business!_ Chloe prepared to duck out of the way should another idiot decide to show his friends how much hair he had on his...  
The burly guards handcuffed the men's wrists to the end posts and stepped away from the center area, leaving the middle post open. Now, the shouting had risen to a deafening scream, and she saw yet another pair of gorillas moving quickly between the lines of armed militia, heads down and dragging someone... _oh, sweet_ jesus _oh fucking god_ nononono _not lucifer_ not _my lucifer..._  
His wings were hanging from his back, torn and bleeding, feathers broken and dragging in the dirt. She'd groomed those feathers, saw the pleasure it gave him and loved to bury her face in the mystical delicacy between the base of his wings, where the long, curved scars had once been. Interdimensional, he'd called it. Somehow, he could extend and then fold the beautiful white wings away to a place he couldn't clearly describe and she couldn't have comprehended even if he'd been able to put mathematical terms on the magic that was her Lucifer.  
He hung lifeless between the behemoths, and she saw that his long legs had been savagely broken, his feet dragging limply in the dirt with the shattered wings. _Please... 'Dad.' It's me, Chloe. I love your son. Let him be dead. Let him be far away from this abomination..._  
They handcuffed him by the wrists to the center pole where he slumped, unmoving, and the preacher man grabbed a handful of his curling black hair and lifted the lifeless head...  
...and his eyelids opened!! She screamed, then, and began clawing her way to the front.  
“Satan walks among us!” the foul man shouted into the microphone. “What do we do to Satan?”  
Anything else he might have said was drowned out by the roar of the beast. Chloe's ears rang and she felt as much as heard the massive growl that sent ice shards down her spine. Thousands of voices, crying for blood... for his blood, his pain. She used the energy in that deep snarl to help her beat a path to the front of the execution space.  
He hung from the post, mouth open and drooling a long string of bloody saliva. What should have been a corpse twitched, the bruised and torn lips moving. His eyes were gone, gouged out and sightless, tongue slit to prevent him cursing them with his final breath yet not ripped out so the crowd could hear him scream. His body was naked and ravaged but still glorious. What have they done to you? Die, my love, my life, let go, die, please, end it...  
He could not have known she was there, could not have heard her screaming his name amid the vile chants and curses the crowd spit at him. Yet she saw his lips move... Chloe... Chloe...  
She moaned, vomited and struggled to reach the platform, to gather him to her body and let them both be executed together. She tried to scream his name and realized the word would not come to her. She knew this man as well as her own body, knew his smell, the scent of his nervous sweat, his touch, his cry when he exploded within her. Knew his rhythms and patterns, his breathing as he slept and when he first awakened and pulled her against him, cupped her breasts with those fiercely powerful, long-fingered hands and buried his mouth in her hair...  
Some small corner of her mind wondered if she was going insane. She shrieked and kicked, stepping on feet and legs, clawing and fighting her way up through the crowd as he'd instructed her, struggling over faces and heads to the edge of the heaped rocks.  
 _..._ i'm _crowd-crawling,_ some part of her mind thought. The guards' eyes were fixed on the preacher, the ruler who handed down the cruel sentences and saw them carried out, saw her love broken and tortured, his glorious white wings crushed and torn, dragging in the filth, to be cast with him into the fires of Hell where he would burn burn _BURN!!!_  
She gave a wild, adrenaline-fueled leap that took her off the shoulders of those at the front and over the heads of the militia who were unable to stop her, their arms tightly linked to hold back the crowd. As she landed clumsily on the packed earth, the preacher moved to place himself between his satanic sacrifice and this wild-eyed enthusiast, but his practiced politician's smile faded into a startled 'oh!' as she brought the gun up and fired directly into the sanctimonious thug's face, saw it explode in a flower of red splatter and she was past him, the guards just now realizing something had gone terribly wrong and she was throwing her body toward her lover. _His name! Say his name and make him whole, make this nightmare end, his name... his name... his name..._  
“LUCIFER!! “She shrieked the word, breath hitching in massive sobs, gasping for air and screaming herself voiceless... “LUCIFER LUCIFER LUC...”

“LUCIFER!!” Chloe jackknifed off the bed, arms flailing as Lucifer Morningstar leaned over her body, grasping her shoulders.  
Her head collided with his mouth, splitting his lip, but he ignored the blow and stared into her wild eyes. “Chloe! Chloe, it's me, I'm right here! You're safe!”  
“LUCIFER!!” Her hands clawed at his clothes, tearing his shirt as her nails drew lines of blood on his chest. “LUCIFER!! Luc... Lucifer?”  
Her blue eyes cleared, lost their wildness and focused on his brown ones. She grabbed his face, forcing his head to the side, inspecting him for the wounds she'd seen seconds earlier but finding only smooth skin. She stared at him, gasping for air, then pulled Lucifer Morningstar into a fierce hug that made the Devil gasp for breath. “Alive!” she groaned, and only her devil heard what she said. “Alive. Alive. Mine.”  
“Yours,” he breathed back, and if her still-ringing ears couldn't hear him her heart certainly did.  
Chloe Jane Decker, formerly a dreamer and now returned to the world of the living, buried her face against Lucifer Morningstar's neck and howled as if her heart had shattered and broken. Dan started to go to her, but Linda put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head. Her other hand held that of a young girl who instinctively understood that her mom needed a minute to fully rejoin reality and only one person could speed her journey back to them.

Later, the detective insisted to those who asked that she couldn't clearly remember the dream and didn't want to, that her return had been all the nightmare she needed for this life. But late one night, soon after being medically cleared to return home, she pulled the Devil close and whispered the story of what had been done to him, what they had lived through.  
She had spent nearly two years of her life witnessing the collapse of America, but had been asleep for only four days.  
It took her most of that night to tell the story, and when she was finished Lucifer Morningstar shuddered in fear. He remembered nearly the same tortures, but they had been inflicted by his brother, Michael, who broke his wings and scourged his body at their Father's command, flinging him out of the Silver City to burn and fall and burn again, screaming in pain and terror until the ground rose to meet him and shattered what remained of God's favorite son.  
How did she _know?_ How could the daughter of an actress and a cop, who had been born near the end of 20th century America, have so clearly seen the horror he'd suffered through when her species was still in its infancy?

********************************

 **Azrael**  
Their dreams were hard, and they were suffering. Chloe's dream had made Lucifer's memories of his Fall return with a vengeance. Perhaps Rafael, our healer, could help them but he'd been unreachable for years. I'd protected Lucifer's lady through all her lives since we'd torn her out of his arms, and I wasn't about to stop now. There was something I could try, though...  
There were and still are a few cultures that worship me as The Morrigan, or Morpheus, the God of Death. I never understood the worship part – death comes to the best of ya, folks, and it's inevitable. Why make a big deal out of something that waits for you all? But they wanted their gods, and my closest 'relative' was said to be Dream, which is also one of easiest ways I can talk to humans.  
So, late one night, while her daughter (Beatrice, and what a future awaits _you_ , my dear child!) and my brother and Chloe slept, I called on Dream once again and the two of us gifted them with something humans like to call a 'lucid' dream. Lucid; Lucifer. Get it?  
They 'saw' me but thanks to Dream she wasn't frightened of the silly little stranger wearing a plaid skirt and Mary Janes who was standing in a corner of their bedroom. I stopped by Beatrice' room first, and wasn't really surprised to find she was awake. She always did know when something was up.  
“Hi, kid. Uh... I'm Azrael. Lucifer's sister.”  
I let her see my wings; tonight, they were a fetching shade of iridescent green that shimmered in the moonlight streaming through her window.  
“Hi, Azrael! I'm Trixie.”  
“I know. Lucifer told me. Your mom's had a rough time, huh? He says you're worried about her.”  
The Spawn nodded. “I think her dreams were bad. She won't tell anyone what they were.”  
“That's because she can't remember them clearly. Like, when you have a nightmare, and later all you can remember about it is how awful it was?”  
“Uh huh. I know it isn't real real, but I can't stop thinking that it was real when it was happening. Is my mom's the same thing?”  
“Yep. Dreams are like poop. Your brain kind of eats everything that happens when you're awake, and when you're sleeping it has to poop it out again.”  
She nodded enthusiastically. I couldn't believe scientists hadn't figured that one out yet. “So, dreams are brain shit?”  
Whoa! Good thing Dream didn't hear that one. The kid had a mouth on her, but she was 11. Every time I hung around a public school I picked up a few choice phrases from the creative little boogers. “Your mom needs to know that her dream was part of the poop from something she experienced for real a long, long time ago.”  
“Like, when she was my age?”  
Oh, damn. What had I gotten myself into? “Beatrice, some people die and go to heaven or hell, depending on what they did when they were alive. But some of you are reborn again in this world so they can take care of unfinished business. That's part of what I have to tell your mom, so how 'bout you go curl up with Chloe and Lucifer... it's okay, they're not being kissy-face, they're asleep, like you will be, and I'll talk to all of you at the same time. Okay?”  
She nodded and stumbled into their room, crawling up on the bed between her two grown-ups and drifting back into lucid-land. In a few minutes, the three of them were on that magical fluid edge between sleep and wakefulness. I flashed my wings and introduced myself again.  
My bro gave me an irritated get on with it nod. _She_ got right down to business.  
“His sister, huh. Why am I not surprised?”  
I smiled. She was still the same lady he'd always loved. “As far as anyone knows, we're a nice, normal family. Don't everyone's relatives appear in your bedroom in the middle of the night, wearing a pair of wings?” I was afraid I'd make her laugh and wake up, but she contented herself with a smile.  
Of course, Beatrice had questions. “But, isn't Azrael the Angel of Death?”  
The kid had been busy on the internet. “Not exactly. Who do you think came up with that name: 'The Angel of Death'? Someone who died?”  
She screwed up her little face and thought carefully. “Um... Dr. Mengele?”  
Ah, Father. Oh, no. How did Beatrice know about _him?_  
“Honey, Dr. Mengele actually _was_ an angel of death, so to speak, but an ugly one. He was the worst kind of monster, a real person who killed a lot of innocent people in horrible ways. He was a boring, dull man, and he in turn was put to death. People who live by the sword die by the sword.  
“But, no, I'm not an angel of death. Angels don't kill people, only people kill people.  
“I promise.”  
“So what do you do? And how come you're talking to me when I'm asleep?”  
Now for the nitty gritty. “This is kind of hard to explain, but bear with me; it's easier for kids to understand it than grownups. Remember I said that dreams are the brain's way of taking out the trash?”  
“Like flushing the toilet after...”  
Trust a kid to make that perfect a comparison for her mom. “Exactly, girlfriend! What you're having right now is a lucid dream. That's the easiest way for me to talk to you. You aren't awake, exactly, but you're not asleep, either.”  
“I like this dream!”  
The direction the conversation was taking bothered Chloe, even if she seemed more accepting of the... unusual than she would have been a month ago. “Maybe you shouldn't...”  
“It's okay, mom. She's Lucifer's sister, and I like her. Her wings are pretty.”  
Well, damned if that wasn't the nicest accolade I'd gotten in a long time. “Thanks, babe! Now, what I do: When people die, either because someone's killed them or they die of an accident, sickness or old age, I make sure I help their... spark find its way to peace.”  
“Like grandpa?”  
I remembered John Decker. He was one of those humans whose life shouldn't have ended when it did, and there was a good chance he'd be back for an encore. “Just like him.” I shot Chloe a look. “I was there when he died. I took his hand, kind of, and led his spark to what some humans think of as heaven.”  
Chloe frowned. I didn't want to lose her to a theological debate, agnostic that she still was... in spite of my brother. More detail was called for.  
“Every living thing has a spark: trees; plants; water; the wind, even; animals; people. Some cultures call it 'chi', or 'spirit' or the 'soul', but I think of it as a spark. That energy doesn't remember things the way our brains do, because 'memory' – like your name and your address -- requires brain tissue and that stays with the body after it's dead. But every spark is affected by what happened during the being's material existence.”  
“Can a water spark become a person?”  
This kid is sharp! “Sort of, in a way. Sometimes sparks join together and form another spark that...” I should have thought this out earlier... “has a different, more complex energy. Like flour, yeast and water are separate things but become bread, if you mix them together and heat it in an oven.”  
The kid thought it over and I crossed my feathers she wouldn't ask anything else for a while. Thomas Aquinas had nothing on Beatrice! Luckily for me, Chloe spoke up. “So, my father is in... what? Heaven?”  
Lord. Those Deckers. “Heaven, at least the way you think of it, doesn't exist. Human languages don't have words for what happens after you die. Explaining how souls... work, I guess, and where they go after the body they used to be in stops living is like your Dr. Hocking explaining astrophysics and quantum energy. Geniuses like him need to use such advanced math for certain concepts that the rest of us – and that includes Lucifer and me – can't ever understand it.  
“Here's an example: Explain love. What is it? You can tell me how it feels, I can see it in your eyes when you look at Beatrice and when Lucifer looks at the two of you, but what _is_ love, exactly?”  
I took mercy on her. “You can't explain it. Nobody can, except poets and musicians. It's a feeling, and feelings can be really hard to describe.  
“Chloe, that dream you had was very close to something that happened aeons before the body you're in right now was born. The person you used to be didn't see Lucifer's actual Fall – we'd hidden you away and made sure you weren't anywhere around for his Final Judgement. You would have tried to stop it, just like you tried to stop what was happening to Lucifer in your dream – that's the kind of person you were. Are.”  
I tried to explain that on some level, far below conscious thought, she 'knew' what had happened to the celestial being she loved. That's why her 'dream' was so horrible, so realistic.  
“I've never been able to forgive Michael for what he did to our brother. You saw two guards holding him, right?”  
Chloe nodded, shivering, and Lucifer tightened his arm around her waist. It was more than a nightmare; the detective wondered if she could ever explain the way living two years in less than four days, and then awakening to the life she'd thought was gone forever made her feel.  
“There was just the one... our brother, Michael.” That was probably who she'd identified as the 'preacher' and the description almost fit. “The other two prisoners were actually Lucifer's commanders, the angels who followed him in the rebellion. They, too, were scourged and sentenced. I can't say Michael _enjoyed_ doing it, but he followed Father's instructions to the absolute letter with, perhaps, a touch more enthusiasm that was strictly necessary.”  
The two Deckers were hanging on my words and my brother's jaw clenched and knotted. I owed them the truth... and maybe I owed it to him most of all. “You know the story of our half-brother's crucifixion, with the two thieves? History confused Lucifer's Fall with Yesh's execution. The Romans typically crucified 20 or 30 people at once; it was time-consuming for the soldiers and mass executions were more efficient. Lucifer and his two commanders were the ones who were scourged, beaten and... well, you saw part of it. None of us were cheering his torture and exile, not like the human crowds in your dream did; that was what happened at Golgotha. To the Host, it wasn't cheap entertainment; our brother was being justly punished for 'sinning' against our Father.”  
“He took it without a sound. While Father was ranting, several of us slipped away and fled back to Earth with you. We hid you among those who had never known your name or history.”  
“With... _me?_ I don't remember any of that, Azrael. I don't think I even dreamed it. What are you talking about?”  
The Spawn broke into the conversation. “Why did Lucifer have to be punished? He only wanted free will...”  
I took my brother's hand. “Lucifer doesn't know this part. I'm responsible for that, and I'm sorry, bro. This has gone on long enough.”  
I hopped up on the bed with the family and made myself comfortable, tucking my wings away. Beatrice looked disappointed, so I popped them back out again and let her play with the feathers.  
“Our Father had the Ten Commandments for you humans, but just one for us angels: We were forbidden to love anything more than Him.”  
Lucifer nodded. “He's a jealous god, Chloe. The original narcissist.”  
I gave him a sour grin. “It was _all_ about Him. We were to put Him first in our hearts and minds; not our mother, not each other and absolutely NOT you humans. So what does our Black Sheep, here, do...” I poked Lucifer in the ribs “...but meet a human woman who touched something within him that made him give her his heart.”  
I'm sure that if Beatrice was a boy she'd have been bored out of her mind, but romance is catnip for young girls. She would be a long time forgetting this lucid dream.  
“Looking back, I think part of Father's anger might have been at the deception, that He hadn't known what was going on.”  
Was God... embarrassed? Was God embarrassed and humiliated that the Favorite Son hadn't obeyed His Number One Commandment? Had defied Him? I think... yeah, he might have been. Lucifer had gotten away with a lot, but THIS... this was too much.  
Our adored brother, cast out for eternity. We couldn't believe it! Not our Morning Star. In the words of a great talent who died far too young, 'It. Just. Can't. Be'. He had seconds to tell his love goodbye. It broke my heart; we had to pull her out of his arms. He didn't want to let her go, but he knew it was the only way to keep her safe from Father's fury, like he knew his punishment would be extreme.  
But none of us truly thought it would go as far as it did. Would we have done things differently? I don't know, I really don't.  
We had no time to say goodbye to Lucifer, either. Michael wouldn't allow us to wrap our wings around our blood brother, to feel his tears on our faces, to whisper promises we couldn't keep but would make anyway. Ripped away from us, wings broken, and thrown – and he _was_ thrown – forever from our sight. We knew where he was going, but it was as out of reach as the past. Done is done.  
When he heard Father pronounce his fate, he shuddered and stood fast. But when he heard what was to be done with his love, his lady, oh, then he screamed in horror and fury, and cursed our Father with his last breath of Heaven. And I whispered that curse right along with him.  
“Lucifer went to Hell, Chloe. Our Father's punishment for his lady, the human who dared to seduce and love the finest member of the angelic host, was that she would live, die and be reborn, life after life, never finding love and never knowing why.”  
It was cruel beyond belief! It was not worthy of Father. I was ashamed of Him for that, and I still am. I can't speak for the rest of the family, but I know Mother never forgave him for it. Father knew that, too, and soon after sent her to join her son. He never could admit He made a mistake.  
“I tried to look after the woman who was the cause of Lucie's downfall, see to it that she suffered as little as possible, long after she'd forgotten us. Without him, she withdrew into herself, living alone and far from other humans. She died quietly and painlessly (I made sure of that), and was born again into a family of sheep-herders in ancient Ireland. Then, centuries later, born to a clan of silk-weavers in China. Life after life, alone. Sometimes she had children...” I reached out and booped Beatrice on the nose, earning myself a giggle.  
“But even though she loved her babies, she barely tolerated the men she was forced to marry. The men weren't evil, but they were never _right_ , either – never touched her heart. No surprise; she had loved and been loved by our brother, and no one came close to what Lucifer was to her.”  
I watched her down through the centuries, this lovely, brave, sad woman. As with all the reincarnated, her face, body and skin color changed but her soul remained the same. From the savannas of Africa to South American rainforests, walking the Australian outback, paddling an outrigger off Bali, surviving famines in Asia, riding horseback with the Tatars, nursing wounded soldiers in the Crimea, fighting off a bear attack near the Arctic Circle... she was no lightweight! Fierce, lionhearted woman, and those wounded eyes... I made sure she never suffered too badly; she already had a burden no human should carry. It wasn't much, but it was all I could do without drawing Father's attention. I wanted her to be forgotten by Him, and maybe with time...  
I reached out and rested a hand on my brother's shoulder. “Lucifer, do you know where this tale is headed? Do you know why a Los Angeles homicide detective looked so familiar? It wasn't her face you recognized, and you didn't see 'Hot Tub High School' until after you'd met Chloe, although yes, you did know her. Just not quite the way you thought.  
“Do you really believe Chloe Decker would have been willing to work with a 'civilian consultant' if she hadn't somehow recognized you, as well?”  
Lucifer was staring at me with the stunned look of a man who suddenly remembered too much.  
“You weren't supposed to leave Hell for a very good reason,” I whispered. “And you weren't ever supposed to find the person you gave up Heaven for, all those ages ago. I blocked your memory of the woman you loved because I thought it would be one less torture you had to suffer through.  
“But it seems like even your angelic sis can't create an Azrael Block that will withstand what you and Chloe had. Have.  
“Will always have.”  
I looked at the two of them, drawing strength from each other.  
“Goddammit, I envy you both!”  
I saw tears running down Beatrice's face, and Chloe's eyes were enormous. Lucifer looked like he'd been hit in the head with a Louisville Slugger.  
“Chloe Jane Decker, you are that woman. The only man you'll ever love isn't really a 'man' at all. Lucifer is your angel, your lightbringer. Your Morning Star. Ask Amenadiel if you don't believe me, but I can see you do. It feels right, doesn't it?”  
Her eyes went to the angelic Devil next to her, and she nodded.  
“The name you knew him by was Samael. He left that behind, when Father banished him. It reminds him of how much he lost.”  
He winced and looked away. She put her hand on his face, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Sa... Samael? That was your name?”  
He glared at me, then looked at Chloe, his eyes begging for understanding. “I don't use it any longer. I'm asking you to respect that, love. Please.”  
She nodded. “You're Lucifer to me. I love you; your name is just a name.”  
He whispered a thank you to his lady, and turned back to me. “Perhaps that's why Dad sent Amenadiel to bless John and Penelope,” my brother mused, and that was the moment the light dawned on Lucifer Morningstar.  
“Maybe he felt it was time. Maybe he decided that...”  
I finished the sentence for him. “... that the two of you had suffered enough.”

******************  
 **Epilogue**

When mother and daughter had drifted back into deep sleep, Lucifer cornered me for 'the talk' I knew was coming.  
“How much of that sleeping sickness was your doing, Azrael? And don't lie to me.”  
Lie? Moi? He scowled, and I relented. “Yeah, that was me, with a little help.”  
“You drugged people! You violated their free will!” Some things never change. My bro was working up a head of steam without having all the facts.  
“That's not how Dreamz works, Lucifer. We put a lot of thought and effort into the formula – it only has an effect on those who are tormented by their past choices, who want and need to see the alternatives, the paths not taken. We gave them a look into lives they could have lived.  
“Think of it as a reset button.”  
“Who is 'we'?”  
I knew he wouldn't let that one slide. Dammit. Lucifer wasn't my assistant's biggest fan.  
“Don't be angry.”  
“ _Azrael..._ ”  
“Dream. I asked Dream for help. And before you say anything, he's not a bad guy when you get to know him. We designed a formula that was limited to certain thought processes, that could only be activated by a high level of stress hormones. It works with brain chemistry and only in a few situations... very user-specific, or else the entire country would be snoring away.”  
He stared at me. Good thing celestials have strong constitutions, because Lucifer had been hit by enough reveals and shocks to flatten anyone else. “You didn't. Tell me you _didn't_.”  
Cue the dramatic sigh. Of course, we did! How the hell else were we going to get it where it needed to go? “Straight into the water supply, bro. Everyone got some. The cops were running around looking for pills when they were getting Dreamz with ever sip of tap water.”  
He didn't know whether to strangle me or scream first and then wring my neck. “You could have poisoned... children, Azrael!”  
I was on solid ground with that one. “Remember, I said it only works in very specific situations. Kids' bodies don't make the necessary precursors, and their stress hormones are different than adults. The children were safe.”  
He shook his head. I wondered how he'd looked with longer hair and that full beard she'd mentioned. “Azrael, I don't know what to say...”  
“'Thank you' will be sufficient. Throw in an 'I love you' and we're good to go.” I scooted across the bed and wrapped him in a hug. “Missed you, dude. Really, really missed you.”  
I left my brother with one final thought. “She'll have an easier time of it, now that she knows why things happened the way they did,” I told him. “And there won't be any more Dreamz for anyone. The people who will never wake up used their free will and decided to stay in their new reality. I'm afraid everyone else is going to have to do the best they can with what they have right here.”  
He let his hand rest on the sleeping woman's shoulder, and I saw the immensity of the incredible gift Father had given him. The favorite son, made to pay the blood price and in turn receiving something the rest of us can only dream of.  
Dad really did love him best.  
My part of Lucifer and Chloe's story ended there. There was one minor detail I kept to myself, but I've never been a fan of oversharing. I was the only one who heard the last thing she said to him before his Fall. I know he kept it with him always; not in memory, which can be lost and blocked, but in his heart, where it will remained for eternity:  
“I'll find you again.”  
And she did.  
With a little help from her friends.

~ End ~  
Notes:  
Thanks and love to Johnny Carson for "Aunt Blabby."  
Many of my ideas for what happened during Chloe's dream came from the novel Christian Nation by Frederic C. Rich. I recommend it for a frightening look at how easily a democracy can collapse.

Fascism will arrive wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.  
\-- Sinclair Lewis

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and love to Johnny Carson for "Aunt Blabby."  
> Many of my ideas for what happened during Chloe's dream came from the novel Christian Nation by Frederic C. Rich.  
> I recommend it for a frightening look at how easily a democracy can fall.  
> Fascism will arrive wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.  
> \-- Sinclair Lewis


End file.
